


Wearing and Tearing

by doctorcakeray



Series: Put your records on, tell me your favorite song [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Batcave, Cuddling & Snuggling, Episode Related, Episode: s08e21 The Great Escapist, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, the graphic depictions of violence are describing injuries and how they occurred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-02
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:57:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorcakeray/pseuds/doctorcakeray
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For everyone who would have liked a few more minutes before that episode concluded.  (And by a few minutes, I mean an hour of reunion with hurt/comfort for everyone!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wearing and Tearing

Dean spends half a second looking to Sam—in confirmation, in shock, in this is _bad_ and _blood_ —before years and years and years of this kicks in.  He remembers the first time a wendigo mauled his father and how he shook and shook as he stitched his dad up.  Dean remembers the first time a werewolf raked its claws up his leg and his father’s steady hands as he bandaged Dean in the yellow light of a dirtied hotel room.

Steady hands.

Dean forces an even breath, _in, out_ , as he grips firmly and gently around Cas’s shoulders.

“What the hell happened to you?” Dean manages to say.

“It’s been a long day.” Castiel smirks, or tries to, but the effect is marred by all the blood and the way he is holding his face tight with pain.

“I’m sure,” Dean says.  “Can we move you?  We’re about twenty minutes out from our safehouse.”

“I think I’ll make it that far,” Cas replies wearily.

Dean remembers sweeping away Sam’s spread of books that morning, nearly upending the table along with it.  He doesn’t know what he’d destroy if he lost Cas again.

Sammy’s there helping as Dean lifts Cas up off the asphalt and they ease him into the backseat of the Impala with the least jostling they can accomplish.  Dean shoves Sam in after him with a “You watch him like a fucking hawk while I drive,” and Sam folds his giant frame into the car, pulling and settling Cas across his lap.

As he slides in the driver’s seat, Dean lets himself look into the rearview mirror once, and glimpses Sam using light touches with his long fingered hands to explore Cas’s bloodied abdomen.

Dean slams on the gas as soon as the ignition turns.  He’ll wonder another day if shifting like this is good for his clutch, all that matters now is tearing through miles between them and the bunker.  Dean glues his eyes to the road, doesn’t look back when he hears Sam hiss.  His hands tighten around the steering wheel, knuckles turning to white.

“Cas, why hasn’t this healed yet?” Sam asks in a low voice.

Cas coughs wetly before he answers.  “The damage is to my grace as well as my vessel.”  Dean tries not to focus on how ragged Cas’s inhalation sounds.  “Crowley managed to craft bullets from melted down angel blades.”

Dean would swear, except for the fact that his mind has gone blank with rage.  Sam is the one who remains reasonable, and asks in a slightly panicked voice, “Did the bullet go straight through or—”

“I tore it out myself,” Cas finishes.

Sam and Dean are both quiet at that, the only sounds that of wind whistling past the car and Castiel’s labored breaths.

As soon Dean stops the car Sam’s bundling Cas out, dragging his mostly limp body to lean against Sam’s stooped shoulder.  Dean doesn’t bother looking at Sam’s gaunt face before he scoops Cas out of Sam’s arms.  “Get the bunker door open, Sam.”  Dean slides an arm around Cas’s shoulder, bends his other arm to wrap under his knees, and grunts as he lifts a fully grown man.

“Too bad your vessel isn’t as light as your feathers,” Dean grits out.

Cas’s head lolls against Dean’s shoulder.  “My wings weigh several tons.”

“What?” Dean says, walking down the steps.  “Aren’t you a waveform?  How do you weigh anything?”

“My true form bends space around it.”

“Of course it does.”  Dean angles them in through the doorway and heads straight for the most comfortable place he can think of.  “Sammy, we need a med kit and whatever information you can find on angels’ grace.”  Dean had left his room’s door open a crack and backs himself in until he has enough room to turn around and lower Cas onto the bed.

“Nice wall hangings,” Cas comments.

“A man’s got to keep his guns in order,” Dean says without looking up.  He deftly undoes Cas’s tie and the buttons that haven’t been ripped open, pushing the damp fabric out of the way.  Dean sucks in a sharp breath.  “That’s a bad gunshot wound.”

Dean watches the way Cas’s chest rises and falls unevenly as he speaks.  “I was hiding the angel tablet within myself,” another stuttering breath, “and Crowley ripped it out that way.  And then I dug out the bullet with my hand.”

Sam walks into the room with his arms full of first aid supplies: gauze, rolls of bandages, antiseptic, a kit with needle and thread.

“I’ve got this,” Dean says, setting the supplies down.  “You hit the archives.”

“I’ll find something, I will.  Fast,” Sam promises.  His jaw clenches as he looks down at Cas, and then he’s striding back out of the room.

Dean gathers up some gauze pads and antiseptic and just looks at Castiel.  “Will treating this help?”

“It’ll help the vessel heal,” Cas answers.

“And your grace?”

“Eventually that’ll start to heal, slowly.”

“Is there any way to help it along?”

“Bandage the wound first.”

“Damnit, Cas.”  Dean steadies his hands and starts cleaning the ragged wound in his friend’s abdomen, slowly flushing away dried blood to reveal jagged flesh.

Cas tries to stay quiet, and mostly fails.

“We have painkillers,” Dean offers.

“I could probably take all of them and it wouldn’t be enough.”

“We’ve got a lot of liquor.  All of it aged.”

“Just talk to me,” Cas says.

“Have you been hearing my prayers?”

“Yes, all of them.”

Dean swallows, his throat tight.  “Sam and I had an eventful day.  Kevin, too.”

“And?” Cas says.

“Okay, but stay calm, I’m working here.”  When Cas doesn’t answer, Dean looks up and meets with a familiar glare.  It’s one he hasn’t seen in a long time.

“Fine,” Dean continues.  “We met up with Metatron today.”

“What?” Castiel’s voice breaks.

“No moving,” Dean says, focusing on his hands again, carefully threading a needle.  “I’m telling you a story here.”

“Continue.”

“Sam is the one who figured it out.  We found him at an Indian casino reading books.  He’s been out of the loop for several hundred years.  He didn’t even know who Sam and I were.”

“That’s…surprising,” Cas comments.

“I know, right?  We convinced him that sticking his head in the sand was a really dick move, and he rescued Kevin from Crowley.  Which, by the way, apparently the bookworm can straight up erase angel warding because he’s the friggin’ scribe of God.”

Castiel blinks at Dean for a moment.  “That’s an impressive skill.  Did you leave Kevin with him?”

“Yeah, figured it made sense, leave the reader with the scribe.  He could protect Kevin better than we could, now that we’ve got the third trial.”

Castiel makes a grunt for Dean to continue, or a grunt in pain.  Dean chooses to interpret it as the former.

“Kevin was able to lift the other half of the demon tablet from Crowley.”

“It’s nice to know that Crowley didn’t get everything he desired today.”

Dean goes quiet as he finishes the last suture and cuts the thread.  He starts layering the gauze over the wound.

“Dean?” Cas asks.  “What is the last trial?”

Dean sighs.  “Curing a demon.  I’m not even sure what that means.”

“All demons were once human souls.”

“Do you actually think it’s possible for them to go back?” Dean asks.  He ducks his head down as he starts wrapping the gauze in place, pressing his arm into the memory foam and carefully sliding the roll around Cas’s back.

“If it’s a trial, it must be possible.”

“Cas,” Dean shakes his head, “I know the path that creates a demon, I was, I—I don’t think there is way to come back from that.”

The hand that Cas lays over Dean’s forearm nearly startles him.  “Then why do we both work so hard to do exactly that?”

“Cas,” Dean says, broken, and then nothing else.  He moves onto the wounds on Cas’s face.  These ones aren’t as bad.  Dean wipes the blood from his brow, his mouth, his noise.  His face looks more like himself than it has in months, and the comparison isn’t remotely subdued by how Cas is grimacing with pain.

“Are all these injuries from Crowley?” Dean asks.

“Naomi found me first,” Cas states simply.  Dean silently adds to the list of reasons he wants to kill Naomi.

“Where were you hiding?” Dean asks.

“I randomly flew between the establishments of a nationwide family restaurant chain.  The similarities between the stores were enough to confuse the angels and make them lose track.”

“That’s brilliant.” Dean smiles.

“Not brilliant enough.” Cas squeezes his eyes shut, his expression twisting with more than the physical pain.

Dean feels like there are straws slipping through his fingers.  He wants to find everyone who has harmed Cas and…more than kill them.  He takes a deep, shaky breath.  “A soulonoscopy would fix you up, right?” Dean blurts out, because it had occurred to him the moment Cas said his graces was injured.

Cas shakes his head.  “I don’t have enough control to—”

“It’ll heal you though, at least mostly.  Like you did with Bobby.”

“You could explode, Dean.”

“You’ve put me back together before.”

Cas’s expression goes soft, the lines around his eyes smoothing out.  “Dean, that was your body, not your soul.”

This time, Dean shakes his head.  “You did both.”

Cas’s brow furrows in consideration, his head tilting towards Dean.  “Metaphor is diff—” the angel cuts himself off, gives up.  “It’s not a good plan, Dean,” he says weakly.

Dean stands up.  “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He finds Sam at his usual table, a stack of encyclopedias on his left, manila folders opened and spread wide, and his computer in front of him with at least thirty tabs open.

“Sam,” Dean says.

Sam jerks to attention, “Dean, I—”

“Do you remember than time Cas sent us to 1861, and then Bobby had to juice Cas up to get us back?”

“Yeah, I remember pretty clearly—” Sam stops to tug a hand through his hair.  “I was hoping for a better solution that potentially blowing up the bunker.”

“Well, how about you wait in the Impala for ten minutes just in case.”  Dean drops the keys in front of Sam.

“Dean, I could—”

“You and your soul are currently resonating, so don’t even go there.  Let me do this.”

Sam sighs.  “I never ‘let’ you do anything.”  He stands up, gathering his computer and the top book from his stack, and shuffles a few folders to pick up.  “Please don’t combust.  I’ll give you ten minutes.”

“Or you’ll get lost in your nerdy books.”  Dean shrugs.

Sam looks like he is currently thinking about decking Dean.  The sounds of his footfalls up the stairs are accompanied by grumbling.

“You’re such a girl, Sammy.”

“You live and I’m throwing out all your ground beef.”

“Nah, you wouldn’t do that, you like my burgers too much.”

Sam slams the bunker door.

Dean closes his bedroom door behind him quietly, toeing off his shoes before he goes to lie down.  As he lays his head down flat on the mattress, it occurs to him that he should have more than one pillow.  Oh well, it’s still memory foam.

“I still think this is a bad idea,” Cas addresses to the ceiling.

“It’s the best one we got.”

“You exploding is never the best of anything.”  Cas turns gingerly to face Dean.  “You may want to bite down on something.”

“I can take it,” Dean says.

“That’s not what I was suggesting.” Frustration creeps into Cas’s voice.  Dean gathers one of Cas’s hands in his and presses it to his chest.

“Go for it.”

The pain is immediate, white-hot, and all-encompassing.  Dean feels like he is on fire from the inside out.

And just as suddenly as it came, the pain vanishes.  Dean feels cracked open, empty and aching and leaking out, until Cas threads his fingers back through Dean’s.  Dean blinks his eyes open slowly.  He feels as if each eyelid has the weight of brick tugging it back down.

“How you doing?” Dean asks.  He can see the bruising in Cas’s face is gone, the lines under his eyes have faded.  Cas grins wistfully, and between one long blink and the next, all the blood vanishes from Cas’s clothing.  Dean reaches to grasp the trenchcoat where the bloodstains had been the worst at the middle, automatically curling in with the motion.  He can feel Cas’s breath rustling the hair at the top of his head.

Sam opens the door while exclaiming, “So nothing appears to be on fire,” and then promptly stops himself short.  “Are both of you okay?” He asks quietly.

“Yes,” Cas answers.  “Dean just needs to rest.”

Sam looks down at where Dean is obviously halfway asleep.  “Yeah, I need to rest, too.  I’ll see you both in the morning, right Cas?”

“Yes.  Sleep well, Sam Winchester.”

“Yeah, uh, have a good night.”

“Night, Sammy,” Dean mutters.

After the door closes, Dean speaks again, words thick with sleep, stumbling slowly from his mouth like molasses.  “So, uh, Cas, what are you gonna do tonight?”

“I can watch over you.”

“Okay,” Dean mumbles, “but don’t stand in the corner or hover anywhere, it’s jus’ creepy, you know.  Stay here.”

“I don’t understand how position affects the strangeness you find in my vigils, but I will remain lying on the bed, it works just as well.”

“Good,” Dean says, or some syllable that nearly sounds like it, before he nods off.

Cas turns off the lights with a though.  In the darkness, he studies the arrangement of Dean’s room, a stack of records, a photo of his mother, his collection of weapons, and many other odds and ends.  Dean’s exhalations puff over his neck.  Cas supposes he’s waiting, but it doesn’t feel like it.

In the morning, Dean wakes up slowly, letting himself run through the previous day in his mind, the memories mixings with his dreams from the night.  Still, he feels surprisingly warm and relaxed.  He shifts slightly, realizing that he had moved closer to Cas in the night, who had stayed right where he had been when Dean fell asleep, warm and solid and present.  Dean has one arm slung around Cas’s waist, snuck in under the trenchcoat as well the dress shirt that Cas had apparently not buttoned closed when he miracled away the bloodstains and bandages.  Dean’s hand feels very warm between the layers of fabric and the smooth skin of Cas’s back.

“Is this okay?” Dean’s voice is rough, his mouth dry how it always is in the mornings.

“This is very pleasant,” Cas says, observationally.

“Oh,” Dean says, and then almost says something else, compulsively, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to say, what else he’s supposed to ask, so he doesn’t ask any more questions, he just takes.  Dean scoots in closer, until he can feel Cas’s knees touching his thighs, until he can tuck his face into the crook where Cas’s shoulder meets his neck and squeeze his eyes shut there.  His slides his hand up Cas’s back until it nestles between the angel’s shoulderblades.

“This is even better,” Cas says in that same observational, mildly surprised tone.  He brings up one hand to brush through Dean’s hair.  Dean lets out a long sigh against Cas’s collarbone and Cas scratches a little harder.  Dean goes boneless against Castiel.

“I’m going back to sleep,” Dean mouths over Cas’s skin, and then lets his lips rest there.

Cas chuckles, and the rumble of it through his chest sounds like the thrumming of an engine to Dean.  Cas keeps his fingers rubbing circles against Dean’s scalp like a lullaby.

“Take as long as you need,” is the last thing Dean hears before he slips back to warmer dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Led Zeppelin song I highly recommend listening to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fSLAaljfGo


End file.
